Fact checks and analysis on the debate

The Globe provided fact checks and analysis from tonight’s vice presidential debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Paul Ryan in Danville, Ky.

10:32 p.m. | ANALYSIS: The debate may have produced no clear winner, unlike last week’s presidential contest, but it clarified the differences between the Democratic and Republican tickets. It was a much more vivid and contested discussion. The candidates amplified, if not clarified, the arguments their campaigns have been making in television commercial and speeches. Each candidate made blows and received them. In the end, Biden proved a better spokesman for the Obama administration than Obama did last week, and Ryan proved a more emotional candidate than his budgetary background might have suggested.

-- Michael Kranish

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10:29 p.m. | FACT CHECK:20 million people will lose their insurance under Obamacare: The number represents the upper limit of a projection by the Congressional Budget Office. The most likely scenario, according to the office, is that 3 to 5 million people will be moved off employer-sponsored insurance between 2019 and 2022.

While these people will “lose their insurance” in the sense that they will no longer have the same plans as they did before, many will qualify for Medicaid or government-subsidized private insurance.

Ryan also did not mention that under the 20-million-person scenario, the budget office estimated that the cost of the Affordable Care Act would go down “because the extra costs for Medicaid and exchange subsidies are more than offset by the increased revenues resulting from higher taxable compensation among workers who receive higher wages in lieu of health benefits.”

-- Callum Borchers

10:26 p.m. | FACT CHECK: Obama broke his promise to cut the federal budget deficit in half by the end of his first term: Indeed, Obama pledged shortly after taking office that the deficit would be halved by the end of his first term.

“Now, this will not be easy,” Obama said at the Fiscal Responsibility Summit at the White House on Feb. 23, 2009. “It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we’ve long neglected. But I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay, and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.”

The deficit in fiscal year 2009 was $1.4 trillion, meaning Obama would have had to shrink the deficit to $700 billion to keep his promise. The deficit was about $1.3 trillion in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and is projected to be about $900 billion in the current fiscal year.

-- Callum Borchers

10:22 p.m. | ANALYSIS: The emotional and personal discussion over abortion is a stark divide. Biden favors abortion rights (as Romney once did) and Ryan is against abortion except in cases of rape, incest and life of the mother. For a significant number of voters, this is an important and determinative distinction.

-- Michael Kranish

10:19 p.m. | FACT CHECK: The Obama administration infringing on religious liberty: The charge generally centers on an announcement by the Department of Health and Human Services in January that virtually all employers would be required to provide free contraception through their health insurance plans under the 2010 national health care law. Churches were exempted, but colleges, charities and hospitals affiliated with religious groups were not.

After strong objections by Republicans and religious leaders, particularly Catholics, Obama outlined a compromise in February: Women employed by religiously affiliated organizations would still receive free contraception coverage, but the coverage would be funded by insurance companies, not by employers.

“No woman’s health should depend on who she is or where she works or how much money she makes,” Obama said in a televised address, announcing the compromise. “As we move to implement this rule, however, we’ve been mindful that there’s another principle at stake here—and that’s the principle of religious liberty.”

“As a citizen and as a Christian, I cherish this right,” Obama added.

But Obama’s compromise has failed to satisfy some Catholics. In June, the Catholic Health Association said the president’s proposal is “unlikely to adequately meet the religious liberty concerns of all of our members and other church ministries” in a letter to Health and Human Services. The health association contended the Obama administration’s definition of a religious employer remains too narrow and expressed discomfort with “direct or indirect involvement” in providing contraception coverage.

-- Callum Borchers

10:13 p.m. | ANALYSIS: For context of Syria: Here is a Globe story that looks at Romney’s stance on what to do, and his distance from the more hawkish stance of Senator John McCain.

-- Michael Kranish

10:13 p.m. | FACT CHECK: Obama administration called Syria’s Assad a “reformer”: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview with CBS in March 2011 that “many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he is a reformer.”

Clinton sought to clarify the statement several days later: “I referenced the opinions of others. That was not speaking either for myself or for the administration.”

-- Callum Borchers

10:06 p.m. | ANALYSIS: No one will accuse the participants of this debate of being asleep. It has been forceful, pointed, engaging, vivid and gripping. It has been argumentative, it has emotion written in every exchange. The differences between the candidates are clear, and have been underscored by the moderator’s vigorous questioning. An extraordinary moment when moderator Martha Raddatz, a seasoned foreign correspondent, interjects “trust me” when she discusses the views of the military.

-- Michael Kranish

9:56 p.m. | FACT CHECK: That $1 trillion defense cut: The $1 trillion figure is a worst-case scenario that both Republicans and Demcrats say they want to avoid.

The Department of Defense already must trim $487 billion under the Budget Control Act, the debt ceiling compromise reached last summer. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in May that his department is prepared to handle those reductions with a plan that “meets not only the goal of savings but also, more importantly, protects a strong national defense for this country.”

But deeper cuts are coming if Congress does not find an alternative. The Budget Control Act called for $2.1 trillion in total deficit reductions between 2012 and 2021. Most of those cuts, $1.2 trillion, were unspecified, and a 12-member congressional “supercommittee” was charged with determining where the money would come from.

To promote bipartisan compromise, lawmakers included in the Budget Control Act a list of default cuts, known as sequesters, to be implemented if the supercommittee failed to reach an agreement. The supercomittee did fail, and the default cuts include another $500 billion from defense.

Sequestration is part of what lawmakers often refer to as the “fiscal cliff” a combination of spending cuts and tax increases that will take effect next year, unless the two parties reach a deal, and which could push the country back into a recession. A deal is not expected before Election Day.

-- Callum Borchers

9:54 p.m. | ANALYSIS: Biden didn’t quite say to Ryan that he’s no Ronald Reagan. But Biden came close. “I was there when Ronald Reagan” came up with a tax plan, and Reagan had specifics, Biden said. When Ryan brought up President Kennedy’s tax plan, Biden said mockingly, “Now you’re Jack Kennedy,” surely reminding many viewers of the moment when Democratic vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen told Republican nominee Dan Quayle that he was no Kennedy.

-- Michael Kranish

9:50 p.m. | ANALYSIS: The discussion over Medicare is an important one. Romney/Ryan has been leading among older Americans, but the Obama/Biden tickets believes that the Republican plan to “voucherize” Medicare will backfire on the GOP. It is a complex, wonky debate, so the candidates tonight are boiling their arguments down to friendly phrases. For Biden, it’s appealing to “folks,” looking into the camera, and asking people to trust the Democrats. Ryan retorts repeatedly: “Here’s the problem,” and then launches into a defense of his plan.

-- Michael Kranish

9:48 p.m. | FACT CHECK: Romney’s $5 trillion tax cut: The figure comes from an analysis of Romney’s tax plan by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. But it represents only part of Romney’s proposal, not the entirety.

Romney does want to cut taxes. He’d lower every American’s federal income tax rate by a fifth, reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, eliminate the estate tax and make other cuts. The Tax Policy Center estimated Romney’s cuts would total $480 billion in 2015, or roughly $5 trillion over 10 years.

But Romney has pledged that his tax overhaul would be revenue-neutral—that he would offset every dollar lost to cuts by closing tax loopholes and eliminating deductions, though he has not said which ones.

“And you’d think, well, then why lower the rates?” Romney said during last week’s debate. “And the reason is because small business pays that individual rate … and if we lower that rate, they will be able to hire more people.”

Romney also has promised that his loophole closures and deduction eliminations will not result in a net tax increase on the middle class. The Tax Policy Center concluded that Romney cannot accomplish both goals – revenue neutrality and protecting the middle class from tax hikes – but Princeton economist Harvey S. Rosen and others have argued that he can.

In any case, the net impact of Romney’s tax plan would not be $5 trillion because he would compensate for at least some of the revenue lost to tax cuts by closing loopholes and ending deductions. And his campaign has hinted that he would consider more modest cuts if it became clear that his original proposal would not be revenue neutral or would hit the middle class.

-- Callum Borchers

9:40 p.m. | ANALYSIS: Representative Ryan is giving a forceful presentation that so far eclipses that of some past Republican vice presidential candidates who had little experience on the national stage, including Sarah Palin and Dan Quayle. Putting aside the question of whether his arguments are valid and his attacks fair, he comes across as prepared, well-spoken and aggressive. That will reassure Republicans and could be attractive to wavering Independents.

-- Michael Kranish

9:40 p.m. | FACT CHECK: The Romney-Ryan voucher program for Medicare: Romney has proposed the introduction of Medicare premium support payments (vouchers) for seniors who enroll in 2023 and beyond. Seniors would use the vouchers to purchase private health insurance.

Romney would preserve the option of traditional, fee-for-service Medicare but, his website notes that “if it costs the government more to provide that service than it costs private plans to offer their versions, then the premiums charged by the government will have to be higher, and seniors will have to pay the difference to enroll in the traditional Medicare option.”

In Romney’s ideal scenario, competition among private insurers will hold down the cost of coverage, and his voucher program will provide seniors with the same care they would receive in traditional Medicare, at a lower price. A study by the conservative American Enterprise Institute suggests such a scenario is possible, and if things go according to Romney’s plan, seniors might not miss traditional Medicare.

Obama contends a more likely scenario is that vouchers fail to keep pace with the rising cost of health insurance, leaving seniors to pay large sums out of pocket. A study by the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund backs the president.

-- Callum Borchers

9:35 p.m. | FACT CHECK: Ryan asking for stimulus money: Ryan did make requests for stimulus money on behalf of his congressional district in 2009 but denied doing so in a 2010 radio interview.

-- Callum Borchers

9:35 p.m. | ANALYSIS: Vice President Biden is doing the job he was assigned to do: attack Romney/Ryan over Romney’s “47 percent” comment, seek to undermine Ryan’s arguments about the deficit by noting that Ryan sought stimulus money, and reminding viewers that Romney wrote an op-ed that the New York Times headlined, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” Ryan has responded in kind, with well-prepared rebuttals, but Biden has made points that Democrats were hoping he would make.

-- Michael Kranish

9:24 p.m. | ANALYSIS: The atmospherics of this debate are much different than the presidential one last week. Last week, the presidential candidates stood at podiums, and the moderator hung back for most of the debate. Tonight, as the debaters sit around a table, Biden smiles derisively at Ryan’s statements and interrupts when he pleases. Ryan forcefully interjects with his points. Moderator Martha Raddatz also feels free to interrupt, just as a moderator of a program such as Meet The Press might feel free to do so. It has the feel of a tough Sunday morning interview program, at which the participants are well practiced.

-- Michael Kranish

9:20 p.m. | FACT CHECK: Nuclear Iran and Benjamin Netanyahu: As background, Netanyahu said in July that sanctions have “so far have not set back the Iranian program by one iota.”

-- Callum Borchers

9:15 p.m. | ANALYSIS: A forceful and well-prepared back and forth on Libya and foreign policy. Moderator Martha Raddatz is pushing Biden and Ryan like the strong interviewer that she is. Biden suggests Romney/Ryan would push the US into another conflict, saying, “the last thing we need now is another war.” Ryan responds that the country is witnessing the “unraveling of the Obama foreign policy.” This is no debate over Big Bird. The focus on foreign policy is a strong reminder to viewers of the gravity of the office at stake and importance of the issues discussed being tonight.

-- Michael Kranish

9:11 p.m. | FACT CHECK:The Obama administration’s early statement on Sept. 11 violence in Libya and Egypt: The first statement, which was criticized by Mitt Romney, was issued by the US embassy in Cairo before violence erupted.

-- Callum Borchers

8:44 p.m. | ANALYSIS: It will be interesting to see how many times Vice President Biden makes debating points that Democrats wished President Obama had focused on in his Denver debate. Looking for Biden to mention as early as possible the death of Osama bin Laden and federal assistance that Democrats say saved General Motors. Ryan expected to have well-prepared responses.

-- Michael Kranish

8:25 p.m. | ANALYSIS:The mission of the candidates tonight is to promote the top of the ticket, and score some hits against their opponent without making any blunders. VP debates usually are far less important than presidential ones, but they have provided their share of memorable moments and zingers. Like many such debates, this one is generational, with the senior Biden, famously blunt, facing off against the younger and less experienced Ryan. It should be a fascinating debate.